In­ter an­nounced that they signed Pi­oli to coach through next sea­son and that he will be in­tro­duced to­mor­row.

Be­sides Lazio, the 51-yearold Pi­oli pre­vi­ously coached his home­town club Parma plus Chievo Verona, Palermo and Bologna in Serie A. In 218 matches as a Serie A coach, his teams have a record of 73 wins, 62 draws and 83 losses.

“He seems to me to be a log­i­cal choice,” for­mer In­ter pres­i­dent Mas­simo Mo­ratti said. “He’s a coach who knows Ital­ian foot­ball and who has al­ways made his clubs play well.”

De Boer was fired last week af­ter In­ter lost seven of 14 matches in all com­pe­ti­tions.

In­ter’s youth squad coach, Ste­fano Vec­chi, had been given tem­po­rary con­trol of the se­nior team for a 2-1 loss at Southamp­ton in the Europa League on Thurs­day – leav­ing the Ner­az­zurri last in their group – and a 3-0 win over last-place Cro­tone on Sunday in Serie A.

In­ter are in ninth place in the Ital­ian league, 13 points be­hind lead­ers Ju­ven­tus.

FPIOLI’S DE­BUT

Pi­oli’s de­but will come in the derby against AC Mi­lan on Novem­ber 20.

Con­sid­ered the next in a long-line of Ital­ian tac­ti­cians, Pi­oli was con­sid­ered the safest choice af­ter a long week­end of meet­ings and in­ter­views con­ducted by In­ter’s man­age­ment — even though he has never coached a ma­jor club.

Other coaches re­ported to have in­ter­viewed for the job in­cluded Marcelino, Ital­ian great Gian­franco Zola and the well-trav­elled Guus Hid­dink.

Big Ital­ian clubs rarely hold in­ter­views for coaches in the pub­lic man­ner that In­ter did, which sparked per­plex­ity FRANK­FURT, Ger­many (AP): REAL MADRID mid­fielder Toni Kroos will miss Ger­many’s up­com­ing World Cup qual­i­fier against San Marino and the friendly against Italy be­cause of a foot in­jury.

The Ger­man fed­er­a­tion says Kroos has a hair­line frac­tion in his right foot and will be un­able to prac­tise for among the club’s sup­port­ers.

“I never held any cast­ing in­ter­views but I ob­served (coaches) on my own,” Mo­ratti said. “They’re dif­fer­ent sys­tems, but it’s not like one way is right and the other is wrong. It’s a trans­par­ent method to make a wellinformed choice.”

In Pi­oli’s first sea­son at Lazio, he led the Rome club to a third-place fin­ish. He was fired by Lazio in April af­ter a 4-1 derby loss to Roma.

As a player, Pi­oli was a cen­tre back for Ju­ven­tus, Hel­las Verona and Fiorentina. 10 days.

Ger­many plays San Marino on Fri­day and meets Italy on Tues­day in Mi­lan. The Ger­mans lead their group af­ter win­ning their first three matches.

The team is seek­ing to win the group and gain a di­rect berth in the 2018 World Cup tour­na­ment in Rus­sia, where it hopes to de­fend its ti­tle.

While fi­nan­cial de­tails were not an­nounced, the La Gazzetta dello Sport re­ported that Pi­oli will earn €1.4 mil­lion (US$200 mil­lion Ja­maican) for the re­main­der of this sea­son and nearly €2 mil­lion (US$285 mil­lion) for next sea­son.

De Boer was hired less than two weeks be­fore the sea­son be­gan fol­low­ing the un­ex­pected res­ig­na­tion of Roberto Mancini, who re­port­edly wanted more con­trol over the trans­fer mar­ket and clashed with Sun­ing, the Chi­nese re­tail gi­ant that took con­trol of 70 per cent of In­ter in June.

The club pres­i­dent is Erick Tho­hir, an In­done­sian en­trepreneur, who pur­chased In­ter from the Mo­ratti fam­ily three years ago and who now has 30 per cent of the own­er­ship af­ter the re­cent re­struc­tur­ing.

And there are five Chi­nese rep­re­sen­ta­tives on the club’s nine-mem­ber board of di­rec­tors – Ren Jun, Mi Xin, Liu Jun, Yang Yang and Zhang Kangyang.

Dur­ing In­ter’s win over Cro­tone, sup­port­ers dis­played ban­ners that read, ‘Shame on the man­age­ment’, and, ‘Thanks Frank, you’re pay­ing for er­rors that were not yours’.

Pi­oli be­comes In­ter’s ninth coach since Jose Mour­inho led the club to a tre­ble in 2010. The oth­ers were Rafa Ben­itez, Leonardo, Gian Piero Gasperini, Clau­dio Ranieri, An­drea Stra­mac­cioni, Wal­ter Maz­zarri, Mancini and De Boer.